In September 2013,[update] the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[1] Corrections (which includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole) cost around $74 billion in 2007 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.[2][3]

At the end of 2016, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that in the United States, about 2,298,300 people were incarcerated out of a population of 324.2 million. This means that 0.7% of the population was behind bars. Of those who were incarcerated, about 1,316,000 people were in state prison, 615,000 in local jails, 225,000 in federal prisons, 48,000 in youth correctional facilities, 34,000 in immigration detention camps, 22,000 in involuntary commitment, 11,000 in territorial prisons, 2,500 in Indian Country jails, and 1,300 in United States military prisons.[4]

Total US incarceration peaked in 2008. Total correctional population peaked in 2007.[5]

Total U.S. incarceration (prisons and jails) peaked in 2008. Total correctional population peaked in 2007.[5] If all prisoners are counted (including those juvenile, territorial, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (immigration detention), Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the United States had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners.[6][7][8]

This number comprises local jails with a nominal capacity of 866,782 inmates occupied at 86.4% (June 6, 2010), state prisons with a nominal capacity of approximately 1,140,500 occupied at approximately 115% (December 31, 2010), and federal prisons with a nominal capacity of 126,863 occupied at 136.0% (December 31, 2010). Of this number, 21.5% are pretrial detainees (December 31, 2010), 8.7% are female prisoners (December 31, 2010), 0.4% are juveniles (June 6, 2009), and 5.9% are foreign prisoners (June 30, 2007).[11]

The imprisonment rate varies widely by state; Louisiana surpasses this by about 100%, but Maine incarcerates at about a fifth this rate. A report released 28 February 2008, indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison.[12]

A graph of the incarceration rate under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population 1925–2008. (Omits local jail inmates. Top line = males. Bottom line = females. Middle line = combined.)

In the last forty years, incarceration has increased with rates upwards of 500% despite crime rates decreasing nationally.[15] Between the years 2001 and 2012, crime rates (both property and violent crimes) have consistently declined at a rate of 22% after already falling an additional 30% in years prior between 1991 and 2001.[16] As of 2012, there are 710 people per every 100,000 U.S. residents in the United States that are imprisoned in either local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and privately operated facilities.[16] This correlates to incarcerating a number close to almost a quarter of the prison population in the entire world.[17] Mass incarceration is an intervening variable to more incarceration.[18]

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released a study which finds that, despite the total number of prisoners incarcerated for drug-related offenses increasing by 57,000 between 1997 and 2004, the proportion of drug offenders to total prisoners in State prison populations stayed steady at 21%. The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in that same period.[19] In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million.[20] Between 1986 and 1991, African-American women's incarceration in state prisons for drug offenses increased by 828 percent.[21]

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the growth rate of the state prison population had fallen to its lowest since 2006, but it still had a 0.2% growth-rate compared to the total U.S. prison population.[22] The California state prison system population fell in 2009, the first year that populations had fallen in 38 years.[23]

When looking at specific populations within the criminal justice system the growth rates are vastly different. In 1977, there were just slightly more than eleven thousand incarcerated women. By 2004, the number of women under state or federal prison had increased by 757 percent, to more than 111,000, and the percentage of women in prison has increased every year, at roughly double the rate of men, since 2000.[24] The rate of incarcerated women has expanded at about 4.6% annually between 1995 and 2005 with women now accounting for 7% of the population in state and federal prisons.

The stats source is the World Prison Population List. 8th edition. Prisoners per 100,000 population.[7]

Comparing some countries with similar percentages of immigrants, Germany has an incarceration rate of 76 per 100,000 population (as of 2014),[25]Italy is 85 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[26] and Saudi Arabia is 161 per 100,000 (as of 2013).[27] Comparing other countries with a zero tolerance policy for illegal drugs, the rate of Russia is 455 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[28]Kazakhstan is 275 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[29]Singapore is 220 per 100,000 (as of 2014),[30] and Sweden is 60 per 100,000 (as of 2014).[31]

A 2014 report by the National Research Council identified two main causes of the increase in the United States' incarceration rate over the previous 40 years: longer prison sentences and increases in the likelihood of imprisonment. The same report found that longer prison sentences were the main driver of increasing incarceration rates since 1990.[33]

Even though there are other countries that commit more inmates to prison annually, the fact that the United States keeps their prisoners longer causes the total rate to become higher. To give an example, the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England.[34]

Looking at reasons for imprisonment will further clarify why the incarceration rate and length of sentences are so high. The practice of imposing longer prison sentences on repeat offenders is common in many countries but the three-strikes laws in the U.S. with mandatory 25 year imprisonment — implemented in many states in the 1990s — are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which mandate state courts to impose harsher sentences on habitual offenders who are previously convicted of two prior serious criminal offenses and then commit a third.[citation needed]

Crime rates in low-income areas are much higher than in middle to high class areas. As a result, Incarceration rates in low-income areas are much higher than in wealthier areas due to these high crime rates.[35] When the incarcerated or criminal is a youth, there is a significant impact on the individual and rippling effects on entire communities. Social capital is lost when an individual is incarcerated. How much social capital is lost is hard to accurately estimate, however Aizer and Doyle found a strong positive correlation between lower income as an adult if an individual is incarcerated in their youth in comparison to those who are not incarcerated.[36] 63 percent to 66 percent of those involved in crimes are under the age of thirty.[35] People incarcerated at a younger age lose the capability to invest in themselves and in their communities. Their children and families become susceptible to financial burden preventing them from escaping low-income communities. This contributes to the recurring cycle of poverty that is positively correlated with incarceration.[37] Poverty rates have not been curbed despite steady economic growth. Poverty is not the sole dependent variable for increasing incarceration rates. Incarceration leads to more incarceration by putting families and communities at a dynamic social disadvantage.[38]

The "War on Drugs" is a policy that was initiated by Richard Nixon with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and vigorously pursued by Ronald Reagan.[39] By 2010, drug offenders in federal prison had increased to 500,000 per year, up from 41,000 in 1985. According to Michelle Alexander, drug related charges accounted for more than half the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. 31 million people have been arrested on drug related charges, approximately 1 in 10 Americans.[40][41] In contrast, John Pfaff of Fordham Law School has accused Alexander of exaggerating the influence of the War on Drugs on the rise in the United States' incarceration rate: according to him, the percent of state prisoners whose primary offense was drug-related peaked at 22% in 1990.[42] The Brookings Institution reconciles the differences between Alexander and Pfaff by explaining two ways to look at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes, concluding "The picture is clear: Drug crimes have been the predominant reason for new admissions into state and federal prisons in recent decades" and "rolling back the war on drugs would not, as Pfaff and Urban Institute scholars maintain, totally solve the problem of mass incarceration, but it could help a great deal, by reducing exposure to prison."[43]

After the passage of Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, incarceration for non-violent offenses dramatically increased. The Act imposed the same five-year mandatory sentence on those with convictions involving crack as on those possessing 100 times as much powder cocaine.[39][44] This had a disproportionate effect on low-level street dealers and users of crack, who were more commonly poor blacks, Latinos, the young, and women.[45]

By 2003, 58% of all women in federal prison were convicted of drug offenses.[47] Black and Hispanic women in particular have been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs. Since 1986, incarceration rates have risen by 400% for women of all races, while rates for Black women have risen by 800%.[48] Formerly incarcerated Black women are also most negatively impacted by the collateral legal consequences of conviction.[49]

These new policies also disproportionately affect African-American women. According to Dorothy E. Roberts, the explanation is that poor women, who are disproportionately black, are more likely to be placed under constant supervision by the State in order to receive social services.[51] They are then more likely to be caught by officials who are instructed to look specifically for drug offenses. Roberts argues that the criminal justice system's creation of new crimes has a direct effect on the number of women, especially black women, who then become incarcerated.[citation needed]

One of the first laws in the U.S. against drugs was the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. It prohibited the smoking of opium, which was ingested but not smoked by a substantial portion of Caucasian housewives in America. It was smoked mainly by Asian American immigrants coming to build the railroads. These immigrants were targeted with anti-Asian sentiment, as many voters believed they were losing jobs to Asian immigrants.[citation needed]

This pattern was repeated in the late twentieth century with higher penalties for crack cocaine than powder. Crack was consumed primarily by African Americans, while powder was consumed more by the white middle-class. The substantial penalties for crack contributed to the five-fold increase in incarcerations seen in the plot above.[citation needed] For instance, the disproportionate number of African Americans compared to other racial groups in the United States that are arrested or incarcerated. Figures from 2008 offer a better illustration of the situation with 28% of arrests involving African Americans and African American men comprising almost half of the current incarcerated population in the United States.[52]

Presently, the majority of people sentenced to prison in the United States today are Black, and almost one-third of Black men in their twenties are either on parole, on probation, or in prison.[53] Currently, the U.S. is at its highest rate of imprisonment in history.[54] Young Black men are experiencing the highest levels of incarceration. These disproportionate levels of imprisonment have made incarceration a normalized occurrence for African-American communities. This has caused a distrust from Black individuals towards aspects of the legal system such as police, courts, and heavy sentences[53]. In 2011, more than 580,000 Black men and women were in state or federal prison.[55] Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups, with the highest rate being Black men aged 25 to 39. In 2001, almost 17% of Black men had previously been imprisoned in comparison to 2.6% of White men. By the end of 2002, of the two million inmates of the U.S. incarceration system, Black men surpassed the number of White men (586,700 to 436,800 respectively of inmates with sentences more than one year).[53] In the same year, there were also more Black women behind bars than White women (36,000 to 35,400). African-Americans are about eight times more likely to be imprisoned than Whites. The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, released in 1990 that almost one in four Black men in the U.S. between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some degree of control by the criminal justice system. In 1995, the organization announced that the rate had increased to one in three. In the same year, the non-profit stated that more than half of young Black men were then under criminal supervision in both D.C. and Baltimore. In addition, African-American women are the largest growing incarcerated population.[citation needed]

The War on Drugs plays a role in the disproportionate amount of incarcerated African-Americans.[53] Despite a general decline in crime, the massive increase in new inmates due to drug offenses ensured historically high incarceration rates during the 1990s and beyond, with New York City serving as an example. Drug-related arrests continued to increase in the city despite a near 50% drop in felony crimes. While White individuals have a higher rate of drug use, 60% of people imprisoned for drug charges in 1998 were Black. Drug crimes constituted 27% of the increase in the number of Black state prisoners in the 1990s, while Whites experienced a 14% increase. The rise in African-American imprisonment as a result of newer drug crimes has been justified for its alleged societal benefits. Law officials and advocates of these policies argue that targeting underserved, primarily inner-city neighborhoods is appropriate because these areas see the more harmful and violent effects of drug use. These same individuals further point to the negative effects drug distribution has on these areas to support the inequity in how crimes involving, for example, powdered cocaine can be treated with less severity than crack cocaine. This ideology results in a greater number of arrests of poor, inner-city Black individuals.[citation needed]

A significant contributing factor to these figures are the racially and economically segregated neighborhoods that account for the majority of the Black prison population. These neighborhoods are normally impoverished and possess a high minority population. For example, as many as one in eight adult males who inhabit these urban areas is sent to prison each year, and one in four of these men is in prison on any given day. A 1992 study revealed that 72% of all New York State’s prisoners came from only 7 of New York City’s 55 community board districts. Many recently-released individuals return to the area they lived in prior to incarceration. Also in New York City, rates of incarceration stayed the same or grew in 1996 in neighborhoods that had the highest rates in 1990. Additionally, in these same neighborhoods, there was a stronger police presence and parole surveillance despite a period of a general decline in crime.[citation needed]

Finding employment post-release is a significant struggle for African-Americans.[54] American sociologist Devah Pager performed a study to prove this. She assembled pairs of fake job seekers to find jobs with résumés that portrayed the applicant had a criminal record. The findings indicated that the presence of a criminal record reduced callbacks by approximately 50%. This was more common for African-Americans than for Whites.[citation needed]

High prevalence of incarceration among black men who have sex with men[edit]

There is a 31% incarceration history for Black men who have sex with men (BMSM).[55] Relating to HIV, Black individuals consisted of almost half (44%) of all new HIV infections in 2010. They also constituted almost half of all Americans living with HIV in the same year as well. The HIV Prevention Trials Network discovered that the odds of incarceration are greater among Black transgender women compared to other BMSM. Incarceration is also higher among BMSM aged 35 or older compared to younger populations, and is more prevalent among BMSM who identify as heterosexual or straight. Lastly, the odds of being imprisoned are greater among BMSM who were born in the U.S.[citation needed]

In terms of psychosocial analyses, rates of incarceration are higher for those from a particular city (the greatest odds are being from Los Angeles). Other important factors that predict prison enrollment are a history of childhood violence, early sexual experience, two or more male partners, unprotected receptive anal intercourse (URAI) six months before enrollment in this particular HIV Prevention Trials Network study, drug use, alcohol use, low support, and clinically depressive symptoms.[citation needed]

In the 1980s, the rising number of people incarcerated as a result of the War on Drugs and the wave of privatization that occurred under the Reagan Administration saw the emergence of the for-profit prison industry. Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the US.[56][57][58]

In a 2011 report by the ACLU, it is claimed that the rise of the for-profit prison industry is a "major contributor" to "mass incarceration," along with bloated state budgets.[59] Louisiana, for example, has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners.[60] A 2013 Bloomberg report states that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.[61]

Corporations who operate prisons, such as the Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, spend significant amounts of money lobbying the federal government along with state governments.[59] The two aforementioned companies, the largest in the industry, have been contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which seeks to expand the privatization of corrections and lobbies for policies that would increase incarceration, such as three-strike laws and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation.[62][63][64][65][66][67] Prison companies also sign contracts with states that guarantee at least 90 percent of prison beds be filled. If these "lockup quotas" aren't met, the state must reimburse the prison company for the unused beds. Prison companies use the profits to expand and put pressure on lawmakers to incarcerate a certain number of people.[68][69] This influence on the government by the private prison industry has been referred to as the Prison–industrial complex.[64]

The industry is well aware of what reduced crime rates could mean to their bottom line. This from the CCA's SEC report in 2010:

Our growth … depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates … [R]eductions in crime rates … could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.[59]

Gallup polling since 1989 has found that in most years in which there was a decline in the U.S. crime rate, a majority of Americans said that violent crime was getting worse.[70][71][72]

A substantial body of research claims that incarceration rates are primarily a function of media editorial policies, largely unrelated to the actual crime rate. Constructing Crime: Perspectives on Making News and Social Problems is a book collecting together papers on this theme.[73] The researchers say that the jump in incarceration rate from 0.1% to 0.5% of the United States population from 1975 to 2000 (documented in the figure above) was driven by changes in the editorial policies of the mainstream commercial media and is unrelated to any actual changes in crime. Media consolidation reduced competition on content. That allowed media company executives to maintain substantially the same audience while slashing budgets for investigative journalism and filling the space from the police blotter, which tended to increase and stabilize advertising revenue. It is safer, easier and cheaper to write about crimes committed by poor people than the wealthy. Poor people can be libeled with impunity, but major advertisers can materially impact the profitability of a commercial media organization by reducing their purchases of advertising space with that organization.[citation needed]

News media thrive on feeding frenzies (such as missing white women) because they tend to reduce production costs while simultaneously building an audience interested in the latest development in a particular story. It takes a long time for a reporter to learn enough to write intelligently about a specific issue. Once a reporter has achieved that level of knowledge, it is easier to write subsequent stories. However, major advertisers have been known to spend their advertising budgets through different channels when they dislike the editorial policies. Therefore, a media feeding frenzy focusing on an issue of concern to an advertiser may reduce revenue and profits.[74]

Sacco described how "competing news organizations responded to each other's coverage [while] the police, in their role as gatekeepers of crime news, reacted to the increased media interest by making available more stories that reflected and reinforced" a particular theme. "[T]he dynamics of competitive journalism created a media feeding frenzy that found news workers 'snatching at shocking numbers' and 'smothering reports of stable or decreasing use under more ominous headlines.'"[75]

The reasons cited above for increased incarcerations (US racial demographics, Increased sentencing laws, and Drug sentencing laws) have been described as consequences of the shift in editorial policies of the mainstream media.[76]

Additionally, media coverage has been proven to have a profound impact on criminal sentencing. A study conducted found that the more media attention a criminal case is given, the greater the incentive for prosecutors and judges to pursue harsher sentences.[citation needed] This is directly linked to the enormous increase in media coverage of crime over the past two decades.[citation needed] While crime decreased by 8% between 1992 and 2002, news reports on crime increased by 800% and the average prison sentence length increased by 2,000% for all crimes.[citation needed] Less media coverage means a greater chance of a lighter sentence or that the defendant may avoid prison time entirely.[citation needed]

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 80.7% of Federal inmates are U.S. citizens (as of November 2018). 12.1% are citizens of Mexico, and the next three countries—Colombia, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, contribute less than 1% each. 4.9% have other or unknown citizenship. The Bureau did not state how many had come to the U.S. legally.[77]

^ abPrisoners in 2008Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine. (NCJ 228417). December 2009 report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. By William J. Sabol, Ph.D. and Heather C. West, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians. Also, Matthew Cooper, BJS Intern. Table 9 on page 8 of the PDF fileArchived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine has the number of inmates in state or federal prison facilities, local jails, U.S. territories, military facilities, ICE owned and contracted facilities, jails in Indian country, and juvenile facilities (2006 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement). Table 8 on page 8 has the incarceration rates for 2000, 2007, and 2008.

^ abBrewer, Russell (Spring 2014). "The High Prevalence of Incarceration History Among Black Men Who Have Sex With Men in the United States: Associations and Implications". American Journal of Public Health. 104: 448–454.

This template pertains only to agencies that handle sentenced felons (with sentences over 1-2 years). In many states, pre-trial detainees, persons convicted of misdemeanors, and persons sentenced under state law to fewer than one year are held in county jails instead of state prisons.

Besides their use for punishing crimes and prisons are frequently used by authoritarian regimes against perceived opponents. Prisons often have facilities that are designed with long term confinement in mind in comparison to jails. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in prisons or prisoner of war camps. The use of prisons can be traced back to the rise of the state as a form of social organization, corresponding with the advent of the state was the development of written language, which enabled the creation of formalized legal codes as official guidelines for society. The best known of early legal codes is the Code of Hammurabi. Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform instead of simply using it as retribution. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead.

The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion, the Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as cages, basements of public buildings. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, the Mamertine Prison was located within a sewer system beneath ancient Rome and contained a large network of dungeons where prisoners were held in squalid conditions, contaminated with human waste. Forced labor on public projects was a common form of punishment. In many cases, citizens were sentenced to slavery, often in ergastula, during the Middle Ages in Europe, castles and the basements of public buildings were often used as makeshift prisons. Another common punishment was sentencing people to slavery, which involved chaining prisoners together in the bottoms of ships. However, the concept of the modern prison largely remained unknown until the early 19th-century, Punishment usually consisted of physical forms of punishment, including capital punishment, flagellation and non-physical punishments, such as public shaming rituals.

However, an important innovation at the time was the Bridewell House of Corrections, located at Bridewell Palace in London and these houses held mostly petty offenders and the disorderly local poor. In these facilities, inmates were given jobs, and through prison labor they were taught how to work for a living, by the end of the 17th century, houses of correction were absorbed into local prison facilities under the control of the local justice of the peace. From the late 17th century and during the 18th century, popular resistance to public execution, rulers began looking for means to punish and control their subjects in a way that did not cause people to associate them with spectacles of tyrannical and sadistic violence. They developed systems of mass incarceration, often with hard labor, the prison reform movement that arose at this time was heavily influenced by two somewhat contradictory philosophies

This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. Early facilities were considered inhumane with little regard for health and safety and women were housed in a large room where the strong preyed on the weak. As of 2007, in most of the Western world, the guards in female prisons are exclusively female, as of that year there are males who work as guards in womens prisons in the United States. However, some states have laws requiring female officers as well as a female superintendent, while most states have only one or two institutions for women, some facilities are considered unisex and house both male and female inmates in separate areas. In Great Britain, in 1996 a new policy was passed, the British services for human rights and the United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners say that no one should be subjected to degrading punishment. Some prisoners refuse to go to child care events or funerals because of the humiliation the restraints show, Women in Britain fought for their right to not be restrained while giving birth to their child, however they must be restrained while being escorted to and from the hospital.

More women than men try to escape the system in Britain. Of those women who escape almost half escape while receiving attention at a hospital. Russia is in position,59,000 of its prisoners are women or about 7.8 percent of the total Russian prison population. In the United States, authorities began housing women in correctional facilities separate from men in the 1870s, in the 1930s,34 womens prisons were built, by 1990 there were 71 womens prisons in the country, but only five years there were 150. First, women prisoners were imprisoned alongside men in general population, according to the International Center for Prison Studies, as of August 2014, nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States. There are more than 201,000 women prisoners in the US, rape in female prisons has been commonplace for a long period of time in both the US and the UK. In England and Wales, a report showed that female prisoners are being coerced into sex with members in return for various favours, such as alcohol.

In the United States the Alabama prison scandal at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women revealed gross sexual misconduct by staff members against female inmates. Trying to report these abuses would be punishable by humiliation and solitary confinement and punishments for the offenders were rare. Convict women in Australia Sex and crime Solitary confinement of women Women in prison film English, Gender, - Index of related articles Raphael, Jody. Freeing Tammy, Women and Incarceration, antonova, N. Reforming Russian Womens Prisons. Individual articles in English, Andriani, Women in Prison, Victims or Resisters

Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameralRiksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities.

Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe

The California State Prison System is administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Institutions, which had 136,000 inmates as of 2014. The California system has been the origin of many trends in prison conditions within the United States as a whole, California prisons are overcrowded, with a number of facilities holding more than 200% of their design capacity. Prisoner identification and affiliation is tied closely to race and region of the state, California is the birthplace of the United States most powerful and well-known prison gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, Nuestra Familia, and the Black Guerrilla Family. State efforts against these gangs made California a pioneer in the development of Security Housing Unitsupermax control-unit facilities. As of 2007, by order of courts, the systems medical system is under federal receivership. From 1982 to 2000, Californias prison population increased 500%, to accommodate this population growth, the state of California built 23 new prisons at a cost of $280 million to $350 million apiece.

Californias prisons are public and are financed by the Public Works Department and operated by the California Department of Corrections, the state funds the prison systems annual costs. In 2005 the state rate of incarceration was 616 per 100,000 adults, of the 160,000 prisoners in California, two-thirds are African-American and Latino. Most prisoners come from Californias high density areas, however incarceration rates in less populated areas are higher than from more congested areas. About 62% of inmates in 2005 were sentenced from Southern California, the largest racial group in California prisons was whites from 1980 to 1986, blacks from 1986 to 1992, and Hispanics from 1992 to the present. The California Prison Industry Authority provides the inmates themselves with productive job opportunities, the inmate work programs main aim is to rehabilitate prisoners and promote their successful re-entry into society after their punishment has been completed. Through the program, approximately 5,900 inmates are given assignments in 60 different lines of work at 22 California prisons.

The goods produced by the inmates are available for local, prisoners are able to earn between 30 and 95 cents per hour of work. The decision upheld a lower court decision found that an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies. The Court found that, at the time of the court trial. 7% of Californias budget was spent on corrections during Fiscal Year 2013-2014, list of California state prisons Three-strikes law, Effects in California Prisons in the United States CDCR Division of Division of Adult Institutions

Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, taiga, rock canyons, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads.

By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Germans, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers.

Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania

Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State Universitys Moritz College of Law, a civil rights advocate, and writer. She is best known for her 2010 book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander was born on October 7,1967. She is the daughter of Sandra Alexander, formerly of Ashland and her mother was the senior vice president of the ComNet Marketing Group in Medford, which solicits donations for nonprofit organizations. Her younger sister, Leslie Alexander, is a professor of African American Studies at Ohio State University and is the author of African or American, Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861. Alexander graduated from Vanderbilt University, where she received a Truman Scholarship and she received a law degree from the Stanford Law School. Alexander served for years as director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. As an associate at Saperstein, Demchak & Baller, she specialized in plaintiff-side class action suits alleging race, Alexander now holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State.

Alexander has litigated numerous class action cases and worked on criminal justice reform issues. She is a recipient of a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship of the Open Society Institute, Alexander published her first book The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in 2010. She considers the scope and impact of current law enforcement. Her book concentrates on the incarceration of African-American men. In The New Jim Crow, Alexander argues that mass incarceration in America functions as a system of control in a similar way to how Jim Crow once operated. Alexander writes, “Race plays a major role-indeed, a defining role – in the current system and this system of control depends far more on racial indifference than racial hostility – a feature it actually shares with its predecessors. Alexanders The New Jim Crow analyzes some of the factors she argues contribute to the new, in a 2012 interview, Alexander told the story of the origin of the book. Listening to his story, Alexander increasingly felt she had the test case for which she was looking, in turn, the man built a strong anger toward her, saying in effect Im innocent.

It was just a plea bargain, and that she was no better than the police and he ended by stalking out, tearing up his notes as he went. The experience stuck with Alexander and eventually grew, prompted in part by more observations of events in Oakland and she has tried to find the young man again, in part to dedicate the book to him, but has so far been unable to. The New Jim Crow was re-released in paperback in early 2012 and has received significant praise, as of March 2012 it had been on The New York Times Best Seller list for 6 weeks and it reached number 1 on the Washington Post bestseller list in 2012

After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, in retirement, Nixons work writing several books and undertaking of many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his image. He suffered a stroke on April 18,1994. Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9,1913 in Yorba Linda and his parents were Hannah Nixon and Francis A. Nixon. His mother was a Quaker and his father converted from Methodism to the Quaker faith, Nixons upbringing was marked by evangelical Quaker observances of the time, such as refraining from alcohol and swearing. Nixon had four brothers, Donald, four of the five Nixon boys were named after kings who had ruled in historical or legendary England, for example, was named after Richard the Lionheart. Nixons early life was marked by hardship, and he quoted a saying of Eisenhower to describe his boyhood, We were poor. The Nixon family ranch failed in 1922, and the moved to Whittier

Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned by Aristotle and Thucydides.

The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world

Remand or pre-trial detention or provisional detention is the process of keeping a person who has been arrested in custody before conviction. Those charged with serious crimes may be held in a prison until trial or sentencing. Varying terminology is used, but remand is generally used in common law jurisdictions, continued detention after conviction is referred to as imprisonment. Because imprisonment without trial is contrary to the presumption of innocence, in liberal democracies pre-trial detention is usually subject to safeguards, the pre-charge detention period is the period of time during which an individual can be held and questioned by police, prior to being charged with an offence. Not all countries have such a concept, and in those that do, the court has a further 24 hours either to order a custody, or to release the person detained. Detailed rules of detention are included in the Criminal Procedural Code, the police may arrest and detain a suspect after obtaining prosecutors consent.

In an urgent case the police may detain a suspect without the consent, in both cases, the police detention may take place only when grounds for pre-trial detention exist. The statutory limits of 48 +24 hours must be complied with and reaching the limit should aways trigger immediate release. The perpetrator must immediately be handed over to the police, or when that is not possible, in the United States, a person is protected by the federal constitution from being held in prison unlawfully. The right to have ones detention reviewed by a judge is called habeas corpus, Constitution states that The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. A declaration of a state of emergency can suspend the right to habeas corpus, the Sixth Amendment requires criminal defendants to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation. The U. S. Bill of Rights thus grants some protection against being held without criminal charge, federal authorities have exercised the power to arrest people on the basis of being a material witness.

Involuntary commitment of the mentally ill is another category of detention without criminal prosecution, the scope of such detentions is limited by the Bill of Rights. Administrative detention, a term applied to many of these categories, is used to imprison illegal immigrants. Häktning is a pre-trial supervision measure pursuant to Swedish law, meaning that a suspect can be detained by a court in the case of crimes for which there is a term of one year or more. There are two degrees of suspicion, reasonable suspicion, or probable cause, the identity of the suspect is not established, if he refuses to say it or has given a false identity. A person may be held in custody for a period of not more than 14 days. For suspect who has not yet turned 18 needed serious reasons for detention decisions are to be notified of the court, a person, with less serious crimes, they are given by prosecutors a summary penalty order

Fordham University School of Law is a part of Fordham University in the United States. The School is located in the Borough of Manhattan in New York City, in 2013, 91% of the law schools first-time test takers passed the bar exam, placing the law school fifth-best among New Yorks 15 law schools. According to Fordham University School of Laws 2014 ABA-required disclosures,67. 8% of the Class of 2014 obtained full-time, long-term, according to the information reported to the American Bar Association,1,151 J. D. students attended Fordham Law in 2015-2016. There are 956 full-time students and 195 part-time students. S, students can take a second concentration after finishing the first one by enrolling in a third semester. Fordham Law offers three joint degrees in conjunction with Fordham Universitys other graduate schools, J. D. /M. A. in International Political Economy and Development, the current dean of Fordham Law School is Matthew Diller. In the 2016 edition of U. S. News & World Reports Best Graduate Schools, according to the American Universities Admission Programs LL.

M Rankings, the Fordham Law LL. M program was ranked 6th nationally in 2012. According to The National Law Journal, Fordham Law ranks 20th in percentage of class of 2014 graduates hired by NLJ250 firms and 23rd in the number of alumni promoted to partner. In 2015,85. 2% of the law schools first-time test takers passed the bar exam, in a national study of the scholarly impact of law school faculty, Fordham Law’s tenured professors were tied for 35th. The study looks at citations of faculty articles from 2010 through 2014, in a survey conducted by Vault in 2017, Fordham Law comes 8th in terms of big law placement and 9th when class size was factored in. Originally located in New Yorks downtown Financial District, Fordham Law is currently located on the West Side of Manhattan, as part of the universitys Lincoln Center Master Plan, unveiled in 2005, a new law school building was built. The building took three years to complete, following the groundbreaking on May 2,2011, the new law school building is part of the universitys Phase 1 redevelopment of its Lincoln Center Campus.

The law school portion of the building was dedicated on September 18,2014, Fordham offers an extensive legal writing program, with many course offerings beyond the first year. All legal writing courses are taught by adjunct professors, the Clinical education program at Fordham Law is ranked 22nd nationally by U. S. News & World Report in its 2016 edition of Americas Best Graduate Schools. At Fordham, clinical education is available but not required, students are selected for clinics via a competitive application process. Fordham students have an opportunity to enroll in clinics following their first year, currently,16 clinics are offered, Fordhams clinics represent clients as Lincoln Square Legal Services, a small law firm housed within the school. The Crowley Program in International Human Rights, named after the late Professor Joseph R. Crowley, was founded in 1997 and it is a program of study in international human rights law undertaken in the 2L year, culminating in a two-week overseas fact-finding mission in the summer.

Students in the program are known as Crowley Scholars, the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice works with students and with social justice organizations both locally and internationally to advocate for human rights. PIRC earned Fordham Law the American Bar Associations 2008 Pro Bono Publico Award, students at Fordham Law publish six nationally recognized law journals

Fatal Invention argues that America is once again on the brink of classifying population by race and she was a blogger at blackprof. com. Roberts has delivered several endowed lectures, including the James Thomas Lecture at Yale Law School and she received the Radcliffe University Graduate Society Medal in June 1998. Her current projects concern race and child welfare policy, Roberts has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. Roberts is featured in the film, Silent Choices, about abortion. Roberts served as an advisor to the film, Roberts has drawn parallels between what she sees as current U. S. imperialism and white supremacy. Throughout the years, Roberts has explored such as race, reproduction. Additionally, through her writings she has taken her analysis a step further to examine the interconnectivity of these issues, Roberts explores the dangers of the continued research of race in the science and medical fields in her book “Fatal Invention”.

Roberts along with Rhoda Reddock, Sandra Reid and Dianna Douglass study the outbreak of HIV in the Caribbean in Sex, And Taboo, Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond. Using an interdisciplinary view, the authors research how different factors like gender, Gender is emphasized in order to better understand the outbreak of HIV because the authors believe gender impacts sexuality. Roberts, Reddock and Douglass argue that by looking at HIV through these different lens people will be able to create programs to end the spread of HIV. Sexuality and gender is explored in order to be used to end HIV and AIDS epidemic through academics, public health, Sex and Taboo incorporates the research presented at a conference at the University of the West Indies with the theme of gender, sexuality and HIV

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a law enforcement agency of the federal government of the United States tasked to enforce the immigration laws of the United States and to investigate criminal and terrorist activity of transnational organizations. ICE has two primary …

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, and a founding constituent college of the federal University of London. King's was established in 1829 by King George IV and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, when it received …

Remand is the process of detaining a person who has been arrested and charged with an offense until their trial. A person who is held on remand may be held as a prisoner in prison. Varying terminology is used, but "remand" is generally …

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the …

The Sassi cave houses of Matera are among the first human settlements in Italy dating back to the Paleolithic.

Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north and Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel …

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's …

The war on drugs is a campaign, led by the U.S. federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade in the United States. The initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the …

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He had previously served as the 36th vice president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as both a U.S. representative and senator from California. — Nixon was …

Nixon (second from right) makes his newspaper debut in 1916, contributing five cents to a fund for war orphans. Donald is to the left of his brother.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. — Reagan …

Fordham University School of Law is a professional graduate school of Fordham University. The school is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, and is one of eight ABA-approved law schools in that city. In 2013, 91% of the law …

The American Civil Liberties Union is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Officially nonpartisan, the organization has been …

This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. According to a study reported in September 2014 by the International Center for Prison Studies, as of August 2014, across the world, 625,000 women and children are being held in penal institutions with the female prison …

Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have committed crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions whose goals are to identify and catch unlawful individuals to inflict a form of punishment on them. Other goals include the rehabilitation …

The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was an Act of Congress that was signed into federal law by U.S. President Barack Obama on August 3, 2010 that reduces the disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger certain federal criminal penalties from a …

Immigration detention in the United States began in the 1890s at Ellis Island. It was used a permanent holding facility for foreign nationals throughout the second world war, but fell into disuse in the 1950s. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan reacted to the mass migration of asylum seekers arriving in …

Immigrants apprehended by Rio Grande Valley CBP Agents, 2016

Average daily population of detained immigrants held by the United States government for the fiscal years 1994-2017.

The United States Department of Justice, also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government, responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice in the United States, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other …

The California State Prison System is administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Institutions, which had 136,000 inmates as of 2014. The state of California also relies on private and leased prisons. The number of California prisoners in private …

This article discusses the incarceration of women in prisons and jails within the United States. According to a November 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, 219,000 women are incarcerated in the United States. A 2017 report by the World Prison Brief states: "The highest female prison …

Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court instead of serving time in prison. — In some jurisdictions, the term probation applies only to community sentences, such as suspended sentences. In others, probation also …

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is the collective scientific national academy of the United States. The name is used interchangeably in two senses: as an umbrella term for its three quasi-independent honorific member …

Michelle Alexander is a writer, civil rights advocate, and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. She is best known for her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and is an opinion columnist for The New York …

A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which an offender or perpetrator uses or threatens to use force upon a victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder or rape, as well as crimes in which violence is the means to an end. Violent crimes …

Violent crime in the United States per the Uniform Crime Report (UCR).

Dorothy E. Roberts is an American scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate. She writes and lectures on gender, race, and class in legal issues. Her concerns include changing thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare and …

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist …

Derek Sanderson Jeter is an American former professional baseball shortstop, businessman, and baseball executive. He has been the chief executive officer and part owner of the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball since September 2017. — As a shortstop …

Prague is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, the 14th largest city in the European Union and the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its …

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 7.3 million visitors to its three locations in 2016, it was the fourth most visited art museum in the world, and the fifth most visited museum of any kind. Its permanent …

The Order of Saint George is today the highest purely military decoration of the Russian Federation. Originally established November 26, 1769 as the highest military decoration of the Russian Empire by Empress Catherine the Great. After …